Skydiver Liam Dunne has spoken about the panicked fall he said could have killed him.

The Taupo father-of-two said soft, wet ground saved him from death when a gear problem during a routine jump meant his emergency parachute opened just 225m above the ground.

"If the ground hadn't been so soft every bone would have been shattered - I would have been dead," Liam said from his bed at Christchurch Hospital yesterday.

"I made some pretty big dents in the ground."

Dunne said he felt extremely lucky, despite his broken vertebra, which has been stabilised with rods and pins.

"It is just nice to be here talking, to be here at all. We are waiting for the bruising and swelling to go down to see what we are dealing with," he said.

"I am just resting up for now, staying in bed and trying to stay as still as possible."

The experienced skydiver had just finished filming a four-way group jump at The Good Vibes festival in Motueka on Thursday when things went wrong.

Dunne tried to detach the wings from his camera suit but accidentally disengaged one brake, sending his parachute into a spin. He frantically tried to release the other brake to stabilise the spin but couldn't.

"The ground was rushing up to me and I was waiting for the reserve to open. It got to the stage where I thought 'it's too late - I'm a goner'.